The New Odyssey Project

Photo by Khalil Baalbaki.

Signals of Spring is delighted to announce one of the first international partnerships as we start to track animals around the globe! The New Odyssey project is doing some exciting research with Black Storks, and the project is run out of Czech Republic. In a fascinating study, we are collaborating with the group as the birds move from India to Siberia, where they breed and have their young. Coordinated by Czech Radio, all of Czech Republic has been touched by the work.
The coordinators of the project—which is a follow-up to previous tracking efforts—Head of the project, Miroslav Bobek, reports, “This year we are monitoring storks from Mongolia for the first time - and we will surely find out something new. Even repeated monitoring of an individual bird, Altynai is very interesting. How do the migratory routes differ every year? What will be her destiny?” The group hopes to learn whether the birds migrate to the same locations year after year, and breed in the identical place.

In addition to learning the specific migratory routes of the animals, two of the critical social issues that face the animals are the difficult terrain [mountains] and also hunters along the way. Local hunters do, indeed, shoot migratory birds in these places. This is particularly true during the migration in the fall, when the animals travel south a little more slowly than when they migrate to Siberia in the Spring.

Funds are provided by partners and sponsors. Czech Radio is pleased to deliver the program as “the project enables popularization of science, nature and conservation. The storks allow coverage about people in different regions [of the world], which are far from Czech Republic.”

Culturally and geographically, the project continues to serve to bring people together. The radio station creates a national interest as the birds were reported on in recent year’s efforts. The entire nation know about these important birds as reporting came in from Siberia, India, and Afghanistan, to name a few.